A common yet grave fallacy is to assume that (the actions of) (part of) the infrastructure of a particular country at a particular time and place is derived from a singular cause, of which a metaphysical nature attributed to said cause would be even more so. That said, attributing (a perception of) (failed) politics as an "outflow" of a country's culture is in my honest opinion a crock of bull. I'm not denying that culture and politics are related: there clearly is a relationship between the two in the broader historical context. However, this reductionist outlook panders to more than your garden variety racism, itself being built on misinterpretations and misunderstandings. Why is that?
First of all, consider that politics and culture are mutually exclusive concepts, although their definitions may not appear to be so on the surface. Politics (according to the pseudo-omniscient Wikipedia [1])
So, what's to stop us from believing that to be the case? On a simpler level, one can argue that Saddam's government was not democratic. Therefore, his actions were not the wishes of the Iraqi people, but rather his own and that of his Ba'ath party. An argument can be made against the Iraqi people for not standing up to Saddam, but such an argument would disregard cultural views on the libertarian/authoritarian axis as well as the sociopolitical disposition of the Iraqi people in facing such an ignominious threat. What if a large portion of the population preferred life that way, not having to worry about the higher tier aspirations of scheming politicians and their affairs, and live their lives with complete apathy towards the state and its policies? What if, unlike America, politics is not a major concern of the people of this developing nation? There is no detriment to having the affairs of a country being dictated by a handful of people as long as this process is guided in what benefits the country as a whole in the long term because or in spite of public opinion.
It is that last statement that undermines the legitimacy of the idea that a nation's politics is solely influenced by a nation's culture. In fact, that history's tyrants have had the power to even change or alter a country's practiced culture to reflect a political interest affirms the converse of the above statement. For example, personality cults have been one of the mainstays of contemporary politics in Turkmenistan, where the President has had unprecedented power to sway a people's view of life with haughty and ostentatious imagery [3]. The same can be said of some Middle Eastern nations and the old Soviet Russia, particularly where Stalin was involved. Antonio Gramsci, an Italian writer and political theorist, found that his study of what he referred to as "Cultural Hegemony"
The relationship is more reductionist in the point of view of xenophobic, racist, and racial-centric discourses, a convenience to support a hammer that can fix any nail, let alone particular ones. Hitler's Nazi Germany is the prime example that comes to mind: a government that beats around every bush to demonize Jewish populations based on misconceptions of their culture, and extending this simplistic view to encompass every element of their sphere of existence, from their mannerisms to the way decisions are passed in Jewish societies. The same goes for Islamophobia, except that religion, not race, is the imagined fountain from which springs reductionist explanations for every aspect of a Muslim's behavior. These simplistic views fail to take into account the individuality of the human being and the circumstances that influence him or her, and continue to deny the other factors that shape an individual, including politics itself.
This post will conclude with two things. The first is a word of caution. It is tempting to subject everything one sees in a particular individual or group to an assumed parsimony, in essence denying their individuality and demeaning their experiences as human beings. The second is a question: do you think that attributing politics solely to culture... is legitimate?
Salaam, from Saracen
First of all, consider that politics and culture are mutually exclusive concepts, although their definitions may not appear to be so on the surface. Politics (according to the pseudo-omniscient Wikipedia [1])
is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to behavior within civil governments, but politics has been observed in other group interactions, including corporate, academic, and religious institutions. It consists of "social relations involving authority or power" and refers to the regulation of a political unit, and to the methods and tactics used to formulate and apply policy.On the other hand, culture [2]
is a term that has various meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions. However, the word "culture" is most commonly used in three basic senses:Simple observation concludes that the meaning of the word "culture" is abstract, but it is commonly taken to be the last meaning on the list. In the vein of the meanings of these words, one can see that politics, being a system or process established by a particular collective, can arise from the "collective beliefs" of a group of people (i.e. their culture), and it is tempting - perhaps too tempting - to believe that it is the only factor. For example, one can probably surmise that since Saddam Hussein was the political face of Iraq, then Iraqi culture must have been sadistic, racist, and warmongering since Saddam tortured dissident subjects, gassed the Kurds in the early 90's, invaded Kuwait during the Second Gulf War, and ruled the country with an iron fist. People can also guess that Palestinians and Iranians are brutal because their regimes are brutal. The same can go for North Korea, China, Israel, and other countries with less reputable governments.
* Excellence of taste in the fine arts and humanities, also known as high culture
* An integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for symbolic thought and social learning
* The set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or group
So, what's to stop us from believing that to be the case? On a simpler level, one can argue that Saddam's government was not democratic. Therefore, his actions were not the wishes of the Iraqi people, but rather his own and that of his Ba'ath party. An argument can be made against the Iraqi people for not standing up to Saddam, but such an argument would disregard cultural views on the libertarian/authoritarian axis as well as the sociopolitical disposition of the Iraqi people in facing such an ignominious threat. What if a large portion of the population preferred life that way, not having to worry about the higher tier aspirations of scheming politicians and their affairs, and live their lives with complete apathy towards the state and its policies? What if, unlike America, politics is not a major concern of the people of this developing nation? There is no detriment to having the affairs of a country being dictated by a handful of people as long as this process is guided in what benefits the country as a whole in the long term because or in spite of public opinion.
It is that last statement that undermines the legitimacy of the idea that a nation's politics is solely influenced by a nation's culture. In fact, that history's tyrants have had the power to even change or alter a country's practiced culture to reflect a political interest affirms the converse of the above statement. For example, personality cults have been one of the mainstays of contemporary politics in Turkmenistan, where the President has had unprecedented power to sway a people's view of life with haughty and ostentatious imagery [3]. The same can be said of some Middle Eastern nations and the old Soviet Russia, particularly where Stalin was involved. Antonio Gramsci, an Italian writer and political theorist, found that his study of what he referred to as "Cultural Hegemony"
leads to certain definitions of the concept of the state that is usually understood as a political society (or dictatorship, or coercive apparatus meant to mould the popular mass in accordance with the type of production and economy at a given moment) and not as a balance between the political society and the civil society (or the hegemony of a social group over the entire national society, exercised through the so-called private organisations, such as the church, the unions, the schools, etc.).” [4]That is to say that the political apparatus as it exists today in many countries molds a nation's consensus independent of a nation's culture. Politicians are active human beings, as are the people of a nation. However, the sway of the former is influenced by circumstances surrounding the people (visionaries like Gamal Abdel Nasser and puppets like the Shah of Iran) and the ideas, local (such as, for example, Shari'a Law advocated by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt) or foreign (such as, for example, Marxism, which is embodied in Egypt by the Egyptian Community Party).
The relationship is more reductionist in the point of view of xenophobic, racist, and racial-centric discourses, a convenience to support a hammer that can fix any nail, let alone particular ones. Hitler's Nazi Germany is the prime example that comes to mind: a government that beats around every bush to demonize Jewish populations based on misconceptions of their culture, and extending this simplistic view to encompass every element of their sphere of existence, from their mannerisms to the way decisions are passed in Jewish societies. The same goes for Islamophobia, except that religion, not race, is the imagined fountain from which springs reductionist explanations for every aspect of a Muslim's behavior. These simplistic views fail to take into account the individuality of the human being and the circumstances that influence him or her, and continue to deny the other factors that shape an individual, including politics itself.
This post will conclude with two things. The first is a word of caution. It is tempting to subject everything one sees in a particular individual or group to an assumed parsimony, in essence denying their individuality and demeaning their experiences as human beings. The second is a question: do you think that attributing politics solely to culture... is legitimate?
Salaam, from Saracen
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